We heat up some breakfast after putting on every piece of clothing we have with us. Hot oatmeal and cocoa help me get moving and we decide to go for a hike up to Glacier Basin after we pack up camp.

The trail to Glacier Basin travels up past Glacier Falls. It's an absolutely gorgeous morning without a cloud in the sky. There's frost on some of the vegetation, making us feel less wimpy for being cold. As I snap one picture of Kent he does an eerily accurate imitation of the infamous sasquatch film.

The trail is steep, and in a few particularly steep and rocky spots, there are even fixed ropes. I think we could have done without them on this trip, but it looks like the rock is usually wet, and then the ropes would be extremely handy.

As it gets closer to the time we should turn around we take a couple of turns saying, "Well, lets just go up past that (bend, rise, tree)." We're hoping to break out into the basin itself but we don't know how far away that might be. Eventually we decide to head back down. We talk about coming back on a family outing sometime. Everybody could enjoy Monte Cristo, and maybe Kent and I could steal away for a few hours and make it up to see the basin ringed with peaks. We'll be back.

On the ride out, Kent has our only mechanical mishap of the trip. He bounces over a rock and drops his chain. We joke about the low adventure quotient of this trip. It doesn't make for an epic story, but the memories are just as satisfying in a different way.

For you bike geeks out there, here's a picture of my loaded bike. My sleeping bag is in the dry-bag behind the saddle, and my jacket is lashed on top of one of the panniers. Everything else fits in the two small Ortlieb front panniers or the Ortlieb handlebar bag. I would have had lots of extra room but I brought along a pair of trail-running shoes for hiking.